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Category Archives: Garden

Two years ago, I ordered an Orenco apple tree. The nursery wasn’t able to fill my order, so I tried again last year. Again, the nursery wasn’t able to fill the order. As a result, I talked with the orchardist who has been custom grafting apple trees for me and he grafted the Orenco for me. In December, the tree was ready to come to Illahe. It has been planted and I’ve been waiting for it to break dormancy. Today, it started showing signs that it is breaking dormancy (the buds are swelling and there is a tiny bit of green on the tip of one bud). In addition, the plants that I’d ordered a few months ago have arrived. So what are they and why?

The biggest addition is three crabapple trees. We have planted 10 Gravenstein apple trees at the lodge over the last five years. Gravensteins are our favorite apple, but they have one minor downside. Gravensteins produce sterile pollen. In order for fruit to form, the flower has to be pollinated with viable pollen. Now that some of the Gravensteins are getting to the point where they may bloom, I wanted to be certain that they’d have a pollen source. Crabapples have a long bloom period so they’ll help pollinate the Gravensteins and the later blooming apple trees.

The crabapples are important, but they aren’t the only addition. One of the firefighters who came to the area to fight the Klondike Fire told me about a pineapple guava. He said it was the best fruit that he’d ever eaten. He said that it would grow in our area so I decided to try it. I don’t know how that will turn out, but it sounded interesting and it isn’t a fruit that our guests are likely to encounter in a lot of other places.

The other fruit that we are experimenting with this year is a black currant. When my great-grandfather was caretaking for A.T. Jergens at Jergen’s Lodge – across the river and downstream from Foster Bar, they grew a lot of currants (and a lot of apples). Over time, I anticipate expanding from one plant to several – if I find that I use them.

One of the changes for 2017 is the addition of a weather station at Illahe Lodge so we are able to track the amount of rain, high and low temperatures, wind direction and speed, and humidity. We had quite a bit of rain in January, although it didn’t seem like it was anything out of the ordinary.

We have been busy pruning apple trees and that project is almost done. (We just have one of the old trees left to prune.) Most of the eight gravenstein trees that we planted in 2015 each produced a few sample apples in 2016 and we will be letting them produce more apples in 2017. We planted a Hudson’s Golden Gem, Dorsett Golden, two Coos River Beautys, two Wintersteins, a Spitzenburg, and a Mendocino Cox in 2016 and they will be allowed to have a few sample apples this year.

We will be planting a different strain of gravenstein, a Brown Russet, and a Red Boskoop in a few weeks. If all goes as planned, we will be adding Orenco, Grimes Golden, Braeburn, Sierra Beauty, and Rome Beauty trees when the winter rains arrive this fall.

We have planted three corn patches at Illahe Lodge now. As soon as the most recent planting reaches about six inches tall, we will plant another one. This approach enables us to have corn from late July until the end of our fall season.

The tomato plants have fruit and we anticipate having extra tomatoes available for purchase in July or August. We’ll post information about buying tomatoes on Facebook when we have extra tomatoes.

This year, we are experimenting with radishes and carrots in hopes of being able to serve our guests more fresh vegetables that are grown at Illahe Lodge and – eventually – accommodate guests wishing to stay at Illahe Lodge with short notice.

The summer squash, cucumbers, melons, and winter squash are growing nicely as well.

Yesterday, we picked four boxes of transparent apples and made about 12 gallons of applesauce. Most of the gravenstein apple trees that we planted last year have fruit on them and our mature gravensteins are loaded. We are keeping our fingers crossed, but right now it looks like we are going to have a good year for our favorite apples.

We have continued the expansion of our fruit orchards that began last year with about 20 fig trees, eight apple trees, and three crabapple trees. This week, we planted eight additional apple trees and two peach trees.

The criteria that were used to select the apple trees included flavor, extending the growing season, historical interest, and varieties originating in Oregon. After a year-long search, we were able to locate Coos River Beauty apples – a variety discovered in Coos Bay, Oregon. We also added a Hudson’s Golden Gem – a variety discovered in Tangent, Oregon. Down the road, we hope to add an Orenco tree – another Oregon variety.

We picked about 60 pounds of tomatoes, 60 pounds of cucumbers, 40 pounds of squash, and 60 pounds of pears between yesterday and today. (Much of the produce is shown in the picture below.) All of the produce was sold before it was even picked.

We are scheduling appointments with people who are interested in purchasing fresh produce. The people who are interested in purchasing our next available produce will be here on Wednesday. Another group will be here on Saturday.

If you are interested in being contacted when we have extra produce available for purchase, please let us know. (You can send a note through the website or, for faster response, give us a call at 541-247-6111.)

We are starting to get some ripe tomatoes – and have a lot more tomatoes on the vine. Many of these tomatoes will be served to our guests as fresh sliced tomatoes, tomato juice, and in salads.

We sell our extra tomatoes. The 2015 price is $50 for 40 pounds of vine ripened tomatoes. (Tomatoes are picked up at Illahe Lodge. Please bring your own boxes!) Individuals wishing to purchase tomatoes should contact us at 541-247-6111 to be put on our list of people who want to be contacted when we have extra tomatoes. We anticipate having extra tomatoes available for purchase by the middle of August.

We have been picking yellow cherry tomatoes for about a week. Today, we picked the first regular tomato of the year. (It was blemished, but it tasted like a tomato.)

We will serve summer squash, cherry tomatoes, Walla Walla sweet onions, and cucumbers from our garden as well as apples from our trees and blackberries that we’ve picked locally when our next guests arrive.

Looking for tomatoes? If so, we will be selling our extra tomatoes again this year. If you are interested in being added to our list of people that we contact when we have extra tomatoes, let us know.

As I was weeding inside the hoops on the tomatoes today, I noticed that a lot of the plants have tomatoes that are about the size of golf balls. People often ask what we do with the tomatoes. Many – most, actually – will be served to guests of Illahe Lodge.

At lunch and dinner, we slice the tomatoes and put them on big platters. Many of the tomatoes that aren’t sliced will end up being turned into juice that our guests enjoy at breakfast. We’ll also dehydrate quite a few tomatoes and turn some tomatoes into soup or sauce. No matter how we serve it, it sure is hard to beat a vine ripened tomato!! If we have extra tomatoes after using all of these options, we sell tomatoes to members of the public.

In addition to starting to weed the tomatoes, I also put newspaper and dirt on the melons and cucumbers. Hopefully, this will reduce the number of weeds that we encounter this year.

Updated…

I finished weeding inside the tomato hoops and each tomato now has weed fabric or newspaper with manure. The corn is growing and will be in the tassel soon.